Resident artists 2017

Jane Mushabac

Jane Mushabac has written books, short stories, and essays. Her many awards include a Mellon Fellowship and a Leapfrog Press international fiction contest award for her novel, His Hundred Years, A Tale by Shalach Manot. She wrote her short story, “Pasha,” in Ladino. Her NPR radio play, Mazal Bueno: A Portrait in Song of the Spanish Jews, is available on CD, and her monologue, “Joya Gormezano,” was performed in Tovah: Out of Her Mind! an off-Broadway show that has toured to over fifty cities here and abroad. She’s the co-author of A Short and Remarkable History of New York City(Fordham University Press and Museum of the City of New York, 5th printing 2008), a “Best of the Best” of the American Association of University Presses. Her book on Herman Melville was called “bold and ambitious” by Sewanee Review, and her Melville essays have appeared in the Columbia Journal of American Studies and an MLA anthology. Mushabac’s work has been translated into Russian, German, Bulgarian, and Turkish. She teaches creative writing at City Tech, a CUNY campus in Brooklyn with students from all over the world.

At Art Kibbutz she participated at the New York Poetry Festival's WonderWoman project curated by Shira Dicker in July 2017 supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jewish Women's Foundation of NY.

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From His Hundred Years, A Tale by Shalach Manot [Jane Mushabac]2016: Albion-Andalus Books

Two New Yorkers Having Dinner with an Istambuli Cousin

The insurance man’s wife suddenly let out a wail, “Oh, God, the poor woman!”She breathed deeply.“No wonder she’s furious. Women must speak up. I’ve taught my four daughters that very thing in every word I’ve ever said. En boka serada ni entra moshka. If you keep your mouth shut, not even a fly will get in.”“Well, not to correct you,” the insurance man said with a flourishhe could not restrain.“But that saying tells you to keep your mouth shut, or else a fly will go in.”“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” she said. “You know ‘You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ Don’t you see that no one wants flies, but it’s a manner of speaking?En boka serada,you can’t even get a fly, nothing, zero, so you better speak up!”

An Elderly Mother Thinks of Passover in the Bronx

Passover was coming—good! When she lived in an apartment in the Bronx, she’d run to 170th Street and return with her sack of just what she needed.She’d meet friends on the way there and back, and chat with them.Ke haber? What’s new?

The daughter had been so good to move her mother into her house,close out that cramped Bronx apartment;she’d taken care of all the dishes and Turkish pots, and thrown out that blue enameled pot with depressionsfor making bimuelos or leek patties--keftes de prasa. “Where are my pots,” her mother had yelled.But at least now, when her daughter asked, “Mom, what are you doing?”the answer was not a problem.“I’m making matzoh meat, mina de karne.”

Mina de karne had allowed them both a pause,a reminder of the things that were right and orderly.Her daughter used to bring her husband and two little sons up to her seders on the Grand Concourse, and cooking and preparing for them had been all she wanted.Her husband used to do the seder in Hebrew and Ladinoand they sang songs into the night.

The sweet oily smell of the onions entered her mind now,as did the wooden spoon quietly with just a tap tap to stir the pot,reminding her of a phrase from a song,so it stumbled out of her mouth without her hearing it--ken me va kerer a mi, who is going to love me…yo me akodro de akeya noche, I remember that night.“Bendichas manos!” she said out loud to herself, with a little cheer. Blessed hands!

The parsley! It was sitting on a table looking forgotten and envious.Her hands remembered what to do.Take it up in a bunch and put it under the faucet and run the water nice and cool and enjoy the bright happy green of the leaves and stems, shake it out like a little dance, the green glancing this way and that. Ah, the fragrance, her hands were rich with it, bendichas manos.

Soon, with the pan in the oven, she could stop.“Bueno,” she said and sat resolutely at the kitchen table. People were in the other room, but it was none of her business.“Yo me akodro de akeya noche, kuando la luna me enganyo”— I remember that night when the moon tricked me--Why had she loved that song?It used to make her laugh with pleasure at the angry woman saying what she wanted to say.

As she sat, the blue of the sky deepened and broadened, deeper, deeper, as if she would swim in it and never know where she was. Ken me va, she started humming,ken me va, after a pause, kerer a mi.

Then, “Bre!”The fragrance of the cooked meat and onion and parsley woke her.She stood as if in a dream. There were the potholders —she knew what to do.The mina de karne was perfect, she felt it in her bones.She took the pan in her protected hands. Her back bent over but her eyes and hands steady, she left the kitchen.There they all were,waiting for her.